[squeak-dev] GIFs and the Color black

Eric Gade eric.gade at gmail.com
Sun Aug 9 02:55:11 UTC 2020


Hi all,

I've noticed that in the current implementation of GIFReadWriter, we cannot
faithfully reproduce the color black when writing it and reading it back
in. Quick note: before I rewrote large parts of the GIF stuff in Pharo a
while back, it had the same implementation as Squeak. But both then and
now, Pharo does not have the problem that I am describing. This leads me to
believe that the problem is actually at some low level that I'm not
equipped to understand.

I'm hoping that the collective wisdom on this list might have some ideas.
I'm thinking there's something going on with color mapping and Bitmaps
(maybe color depths and conversions as well?) which I don't understand very
well. On the other hand, I do have a good understanding of the GIF format
since I worked on it. The LZW compression is a real nightmare, and even in
my Pharo rewrite I had to keep the LZW encoding portions from the original
implementation.

The following code, when done in a workspace, will clearly demonstrate the
issue:
```
blackForm := Form extent: 100 at 100.
blackForm getCanvas fillColor: Color black.

"Write to a bytestream"
out := WriteStream on: ByteArray new.
writer := GIFReadWriter on: out.
writer nextPutImage: blackForm.
writer close.

"Read from the bytestream"
in := ReadStream on: out contents.
reader := GIFReadWriter on: in.
result := reader nextImage.

(result colorAt: 50 at 50) inspect.
```

The resulting color is not what we expect (Color black). It is (Color r:
0.0 g: 0.0 b: 0.004)

Any ideas what's going on?

-- 
Eric
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